by Hari Navarro | Oct 15, 2019 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
I hadn’t visited it for many years. It’s like anything I suppose, the more time rolls forward the more things get left behind. But this place was special and I never should have left it alone for as long as I did.
My grandfather was a fisherman. Not one who owned or worked on a boat. Not one who would cut out into the waves and feel at perfect ease as the land fell away far beneath. But he was no less hardy as he waded into the swell up to his knees and whipped with awesome might the great rod in his hands. Forever searching and dreaming of those great snapping beasts that shone as they were pulled to the light.
As with all lovers of the the catch, my grandfather had a favoured and secret spot where he would go and hide and fish. This remote tiny cove upon which I now stand. And, again, the wind whips the foam from the waves and drives its salt sting to my face.
My grandfather has been dead for many years now and so I guess it’s OK to tell you about Oeo. It’s not a town, just farmland and I think there was a pub but, maybe, now there is not.
Oeo. My grandfather would joke relentlessly that it is the same forward as it is backward. Not so much a joke as it was a statement of fact. But, then, he could make anything fun.
We had family friends that owned a dairy farm there and my grandfather would drive me in his blue station wagon through the hoof worn muddy rut of its fields.
He was a maniac. Hardened by war and a youth of devil may care, he’d pummel that old car at breakneck speed. Only to swerve and slide to a halt just feet from where the cliff-top slumped and fell away beneath the chomp of the Tasman Sea’s relentless decaying bite.
Then, with his backpack filled with the stench of bait that permeated the sandwiches my grandmother had made and his rods hoisted atop his shoulder, he’d disappear down the sheer face of the cliff.
A makeshift ladder of driftwood led us to this secret spot. This parapet outcrop of boulders from atop which we’d sit and wait for the tug of the fish.
I stand here now with my young son. His hand blue in mine and I look and I see my Grandfather up on the rocks. He is not someone else nor a trick of the light through the lash of the rain.
It is him.
In this moment I know. I know that memories can curdle and rot. That precious moments don’t fade in time, they linger and wait.
His skin is grey and paper-thin and riddled with holes and his ruined shirt flaps as the salt and wind seep through and crash and beat in the hollow of his chest.
“What are you waiting for, old man?”, I shout out into the wind and the tiny blue hand it tightens.
He turns and he smiles. I love this old man.
“It’s the same way backward as it is forward!”, he replies.
And the words that carry on the icy gusts warm me and the tip of his rod suddenly cranes and points out into the swell.
“You see him, right?”, I say to the wide-eyed boy at my side.
“Yes Dad, I most surely can and I think that he’s got a fish.”
by Julian Miles | Oct 14, 2019 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Words fall like hawks. I know someone is going to die. As the Cantor finishes his brief condemnation, I see her move like a broken mannequin; a ballerina of sudden and grace. There’s a falsetto gurgle that bubbles into a dying sigh. She’s quick tonight; a minor offender. The crowd shivers as she steps back into their world, the sheen of her dermis reflecting candlelight in the way her eyes should.
She moves past me. I decide tonight is the night.
“You move well for a Thorn. Who tutored you in humanity?”
I find myself lifted from the ground by a slim arm that logic dictates should barely be able lift a babe. Her gaze sweeps the room before swinging to me.
“I am self-taught, Sorcerer Masson.”
The Cantor has noticed the disturbance and is heading our way, a trio of Watchmen in his wake. His rapid pace slows and his self-importance seeps away as he falls under our loaded regard. With an upturn of his hands, he spins away, gesturing for his men to follow. They look relieved.
I watch the throng milling about.
“Shall we go quietly or with presence?”
Good question. With a simple neural select, I enable my gate and place my offhand on her shoulder – her throat hold precluding the usual placement at the base of the spine.
“Presence, always.”
I slip us through the gate with an ease I’ll pay for tomorrow. To the masses we leave, the Thorn and the Technomancer simply vanish. To us, we drift a few paces to land in my quarters at Highcrag. While my ‘droids frantically rush about, I turn to the matter at hand.
I croak: “Could you possibly put me down please, Theresa?”
She smiles and sets me down.
“My apologies, father.”
I stop what I intended and place all the droids into hibernation, erasing that sentence from their memories as I do so.
“You remember?”
“All of us do, to a greater or lesser extent. Those who can live with that are those who join the Thorns. The others end themselves.”
A detail comes clear.
“The ‘training incidents’?”
She nods.
“What do you remember?”
“That mother killed me and you ended her before I finished falling.”
I swallow. Penny’s descent into homicidal rage had been inevitable. The sudden onset of that deterioration caught me by surprise. It cost me my child, or so I’d thought.
“Before that?”
“Everything, I think. The final part of coming back involves confronting the Death Guard – the stored consciousness of every Thorn that ever fell. It left my memory a bit jumbled up.”
Mind to mind versus over two hundred puissant killers?
“That must have been hard.”
“In truth, most are simply happy for someone new to talk with. I think I’m the only one who stays in touch, though.”
“You can talk with the Death Guard?”
“All Thorns and ’mancers can. It’s not publicised. We’ve done the Union Gold’s dirty work for centuries, after all.”
“What of you knowing me?”
“Let’s not publicise that, either. Besides, the Death Guard like tales of intrigue in exchange for their secrets.”
“How do we do this?”
“Come up with a project that requires you visit Stormcrag regularly. I’ll always be your guardian.”
“What then?”
“We continue seeking the truths of the Union Rose Uprising. We’re family again. Do we need anything else?”
I shake my head.
“Shall I call transport?”
“I’ve already signalled for one.”
“Can I get a hug my from daughter before she leaves for work?”
She laughs and wraps her arms around me.
by submission | Oct 13, 2019 | Story |
Author: Jeremy Marks
“People of Earth, we have come bearing a divine message: Your God is tired. He is announcing his retirement.”
A traditional flying saucer had landed in the badlands of the continental United States. The saucer broadcast its message on a frequency that was picked up by AM, FM, Ham, and Short Wave radio across the country.
The saucer’s pilots, a troupe of “aliens” had modeled their craft to resemble a ship taken from a 1950s era Sci-Fi flick. It was an intentional choice. These beings wanted to be seen by the most pedestrian imaginations.
In truth, the shape of their ship was irrelevant. As non-corporeal beings, they were not in possession of bodies. Nor did they actually travel through space-time. Their appearance was that of an apparition, what in the past would have been some witch doctor’s vision.
“Your God knows that some of you have seen him. His likeness displayed in temples and art is the currency of prophets and saints. But he insists on being experienced as immanence available to all. He is what your philosopher Collingwood called “not the mere absence of time . . . but as a mode of being which involves no change or lapse, because it contains everything necessary to itself at every moment of its own existence.”
Being a people accustomed to a spectacle, Americans would expect to see their visitors. The saucer alone would not be enough, so the aliens became a troupe of statuesque brunettes and blondes one might have found on the set of a major motion picture. They awaited their first interview. But instead of dropping in on Hollywood or Times Square, they chose a far corner of the American landscape, a place seemingly removed from the imagine-making machinery.
North Dakota.
For out in North Dakota is buried the lifeblood of America. Beneath its soil flows a crude primeval thunder, a lubricious lucre that powers the progress of the world’s richest empire. In a place where earth and sky once turned black with cloven hooves and pigeon wings, the Earth itself now turns up a thick, dark vector that dances its way onto graphs and charts and turns over pistons and cylinders.
“People of Earth, we assure you that your God is alive and aware of your pleas and demands, your hopes and wishes. He hears your woes and whinges but he insists that we bring you this further message:
“You must learn to act as though he, whom you love, lives among you. For you see, your God is like a star swelled to giant size, He now is more mass than energy. His form has grown apace with your trinkets, your inventions are a part of his expanded consciousness.
“So now you must learn what your teacher Aristotle said: That the human, restless for perfection, pushes the perfect away.
“People of Earth, you must find among you those who desire no more than to fulfill the requirements of life. Tread not upon them as they are your salvation. Be they anteater or ant.
“That is His message.”
The transmission ended while the aliens waited for the first spectators to show. They could be farmers or oil workers, media personalities and curiosity seekers. They knew how they had called these folks to come from across the vast prairie, their voices cutting across the swirling dust of rutting bison. Their words and phrases shaking the leaves of an occasional oak like the vibrations of a breeze.
What the aliens knew was that words are like mites: they trigger an itch. But their itch can start a stampede toward relief.
by submission | Oct 12, 2019 | Story |
Author: Harrison Abbott
They slapped on the door. Their saliva lashed the glass, and their wings pounded on. But they couldn’t get to us; the glass was too strong. We’d already beaten them. I had the box with me. Our species was saved.
Marcy was crying below me, like a little girl. We both knew that my suit was ripped. I’d already pressed the airlock latch and the red sirens whirled about our heads. And I’d always found it scary, being in the lock when the latch was about to lift. But now I was already missing it, knowing I wouldn’t experience it again.
I was annoyed at Marcy for crying and I picked her up. I gave her the box. I told her it still wasn’t definite whether we would all survive. She had to reach Delta, make sure they got the box, before it could all be safe. I told her to stop blooming crying. I was glad because I knew she would be able to get to Delta. I was just trying to discipline her.
The creatures were still slapping the walls and Marcy wasn’t even afraid of them anymore. I still was. We’d been battling in this ship with them for nearly 40 hours. They were such a ravenous, horrific species, I’m amazed Marcy and I survived.
Marcy eventually stopped her grief and tried to stand up and face the latch. I could see the tears against her helmet’s visor. I told her you shouldn’t have a teary visor when heading into the abyss we both loved. But she didn’t have a torn suit. She’d be fine.
The lights changed on the latch, and moved up in blocks of blue, with the joyous bleep bleep bleep I knew so well. There was the rush of air. Marcy leaned out and took my hand. I clutched it as hard as I could, and I was trying to be the strong one for her, but when the latch opened and the blackness sucked us out, I realised it was the other way around.
Her hand was still griping mine, despite the ferocity of the non-air … I looked up into her teary visor and I mouthed, “Don’t watch,” and, for an answer, she let my hand go.
My body spun away as the vacuum worked under the hole in my suit. I watched the stars whizz about in crystal static. When I was a boy, I’d always thought that the stars were so far away. But I also would never have thought I’d be as close to the stars as I was then. I felt my body implode, fast, and in seconds I would be dead. And I had no clue where Marcy was. But I could still love the sight of the stars, nearest to them as I always would be.
by submission | Oct 11, 2019 | Story |
Author: David K Scholes
I didn’t recognize any of the positions in the job search booth.
Terra-forming Engineer, Change Field Manipulator, Short Tele-Shunt Engineer, Long Distance Teleportation Engineer, Unified Mind Sustainer, Alternate Reality Coordinator, Extra-Dimensional Tour Guide.
Though I could take a guess at what they might involve.
Whatever happened to the ubiquitous Business Analysts, Project Managers, and Executive Assistants. Not to mention Associate Professors, University Lecturers, and Research Fellows which were perhaps more in my line.
I hadn’t come that far up time – had I? Not more than the contracted period?
They had selected me on the basis of my Ph.D. in mathematics from the Australian National University. Not to mention my responses to some of the weirdest tests imaginable.
I was expecting a more formal reception and a little more guidance when I got here. Something more than the lone, barely civil, little bot ushering me into the job search booth.
“Take your time,” it said almost insolently. “Choose from any of these positions that interest you and that you appear qualified for. Once you have a job we can see about settling you in.”
I made my first selection and that’s when I got the treatment. The full treatment.
A bewildering battery of mind probe tests followed by a considerable array of virtual reality job scenarios. Somewhere among this I vaguely recalled an actual old fashioned face to face job interview with several distinctly non-human entities. I think my holograph went to them rather than the other way round. Though I really wasn’t quite sure.
Nothing down time, not even the weird tests I was subjected to down there, had prepared me for this and not surprisingly I failed miserably at my first up time job application. None of the potential employers up here wanting Time Travel Inconsistencies Mathematicians were interested in what I had to offer. It occurred to me that I might have been aiming too high.
The bot wanted me to press on with other job selections in the booth but the rigor of the job selection process together with my up time travel had resulted in brain fade.
A took a break in a very small transparent cubicle offered to me. After a heavily concentrated micro-sleep and some kind of mind nourishment I awoke refreshed and ready to continue. I became conscious of the many other job applicants that were around. Some of them resting, as I had, in the transparent cubicles.
I re-entered a job selection booth, not knowing if it was the same one, as there were so many of them.
I pressed on with my job selections: though with no better results. Failing for each position that I applied for. I began to wonder what I was doing here. Did these employers up time really want any of us down time savages?
I started to look for jobs that didn’t sound so grand. Maybe an up time equivalent of a laborer or cleaner.
Then I got a job. A position for an Efficient Debris Disposal Mathematician. It sounded like a grand title for a garbage disposer.
Going back down time wasn’t an option. The actuarial present value (discounted back to my time) of 50% of my contracted future earnings had already been paid to (and long since spent) by my family.
I realized these up time people knew what they were doing.
We down timers were never going to get the good jobs up here – just those they didn’t want to do themselves.
The up time employers were just going through the motions.
by submission | Oct 10, 2019 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
He stood by the running stream, knees trembling, still panting, tears stinging his eyes, exhausted, wounded and numb with shock. And although the simple clear water was marvelous it wasn’t distracting enough. The weapon he held in his hand was stained black and coated with viscera, as was most of his body. So much death.
And why? His enemy did not differ from him. Their fur was the same gray color. They had two eyes to see the daylight, two arms to hold a loved one, four legs to race across the grassy plains. Yet their origins were in the high mountain ranges; that made them a peculiarity. They had odd rituals. Used stone armaments instead of bladed ones. Their howl was a deeper bark than his clan’s yippy cries. But they were the same species on the same planet separated only by varying geography.
They had lived peacefully yet isolated for who knows how long, only spoken of in legends and tall tales. A random encounter brought them together. A meeting filled with curiosity and a warm sense of discovery. Talks, shared meals, shared experiences. Then a disastrous circumstance lead to a misunderstanding, a squabble lead to a skirmish. Then a senseless killing.
Then to war. And now the sandy fields behind him were littered with corpses, so many that you couldn’t step a hoof without sinking into entrails.
He had been led out there by the elders of the clan, handed a weapon and ordered to abolish all. He imagined the other side of the battlement had been given similar instructions. A resounding bellow and then they charged into the melee. He jabbed in close quarters, swung frantically when he could. Soon he was immersed in the furious act of destruction. Death happened in front of him and on either side of him. He was sprayed with blood – his enemy’s, his friend’s, his own. They fought for what seemed like an endless day. Until there was only a scattering of survivors on either side. They all seemed to just stop at the same time and look about and realize what they had done. Those that were left staggered aimlessly away. He wandered from the battle, past the camp and into the thickness of the foliage, oblivious to everything around him. Until he came to this spot of serenity with the river bubbling easily over the rocks and the bugs carelessly fluttering about him.
He dipped his long blade down and the flow of the water washed the offense off, then held it up and examined it. It was the only thing that was clean. And he could not understand. Why any of this had happened? Or why he’d blindly done the things he did?
Impulsively he inverted the weapon around, jammed it into the muddy bank, took one deep breath and impaled his breast on it. He watched in a grimace as the blood rapidly traced down the shaft in a running line to meet with the clear water and swirl into mixed eddies of precious fluids. For an undetermined time, he just watched the liquescent blending. Then he stepped back off the blade, pain, and relief, clomped a couple of strides over to a shady patch below an enormous shrub and collapsed. He laid his head down, staring up at the sky as the mauve colors hypnotically whirled and pondered at how such a beautiful vision could idly watch what had happened here today and not darken with clouds in shame.
Soon, the awful memories of the day coiled into the blackness of nothing.
